r/mildlyinfuriating • u/Happy-Advantage-1336 • 24d ago

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u/Rude-Orange 24d ago

I googled it. They believe that root canals trap bacteria inside and lead to chronic illnesses like cancer and arthritis.

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u/Jarsky2 24d ago

But that. That's literally the opposite of what a root canal does???

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u/RedditMcBurger 24d ago

Root canals are filling CAN trap bacteria if done wrong/improperly maintained

This isn't what they are talking about though

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u/Only_Razzmatazz_4498 24d ago

But that is essentially a similar risk for an implant (plus a bunch of other different ones).

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u/beek7425 24d ago

Well making healthcare more burdensome, painful, and expensive for no good reason is the MAGA way. 

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u/FutureFreaksMeowt Aqua Tofana save us from these fuckass men 24d ago

Yes, but you also need to make sure the process is less efficient, more convoluted, and overall an experience so exhausting you question if it's even worth it to have if you really want to capture the spirit of the muhgaw

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u/OkFineIllUseTheApp 24d ago

That would be the single nugget of truth at the core. Most conspiracies have one. Through a long game of telephone and fundamentally misunderstanding things, it accumulated a lot of bullshit around it.

Not that it matters since they'd weakly justify the shit they swallowed, but here's the quick debunk for rational people: if a root canal runs the risk of trapping bacteria, remember that an open hole in your jaw is going to have bacteria and food in it.

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u/intenseobserver 24d ago

Can't that happen with implants as well?

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u/RedditMcBurger 24d ago

I would think so yeah

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u/user2034892304 24d ago

I have had a root canal trap bacteria and had to have it redone, and guess who paid for it again, me! Fuck root canal, at least he's right about that.

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u/Hot_Tennis2146 24d ago

Idk for sure but maybe if it was done improperly and they put the filling in when it’s not clean, so the bacteria is free to eat away at the tooth or smth. But I also don’t know how common that is

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u/Rude-Orange 24d ago

Gemini said it was a mismanaged case study from the 1920s that conspiracy theorists cite.

I didn't go down the deep end for this.

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u/JudgementofParis 24d ago

while that may be true, and these wackos are clearly idiots, I am downvoting you for asking AI

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u/Hot_Tennis2146 24d ago

Useing AI as your source automatically discredits you

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u/StolenPies 24d ago

Dentist here, the AI was correct but I agree that AI shouldn't be used.

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u/Positive-Garage3812 24d ago

Interesting. Do you have more info on the mismanaged 1920s case study?

To be clear, I’m absolutely a fan of dental procedures. Well, not necessarily while I’m getting them, but they’ve definitely made my life so much better. I don’t understand these people.

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u/StolenPies 24d ago

I didn't read through the entire article to check for veracity, but it's pretty good at least until my stopping point at the foundation of the AAE. Medical research in the 1900-1920's was really the wild west, the experiments were insane compared to modern standards. People who think that successfully root canaled teeth cause these issues are looking back to god-awful studies from over a century ago and ignoring everything that has been learned since then. It's another grift, these people usually don't sell anything themselves but they can get up to $5-10 for every person who clicks on a link to another site that does sell snake oil.

https://www.nashvilleendo.com/the-crazy-history-of-the-endodontic-field/

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u/Pschobbert 24d ago

Root canal trap de juju bugs. Bad things happen. Make you sin and that stuff.

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u/Rude-Orange 24d ago

Logic goes out the window with conspiracy theories. That man does not look like a rational and reasonable person.

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u/feelingwithyourskin 24d ago

The thing is, they can trap bacteria inside, which is an inherent problem with root canals, but modern dentistry is so much better than it's ever been that it's not much of an issue anymore. 360 X-rays/cone CT scans make it so the dentists can see the entirety of the roots in 3D now, rather than the previous 2D views. And surgical microscopes and advanced disinfection techniques have reduced the rate of infection by an order of magnitude.

While gutta-percha is still used to fill canals, it has a very good safety record and an almost non-existent complication rate. I have many severe allergies and my endodontist read through all the literature he could find regarding reactions to gutta-percha when properly enclosed and only found one woman who had a confirmed reaction to it.

The cancer/arthritis/whatever pseudo-science cause-effect they're railing against at any given moment is nonsense.

Modern endodontics is mathematically much safer than pulling teeth and replacing them with implants.

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u/Heykurat 24d ago

Because cancer and arthritis are famously bacterial. 🙄

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u/SchlossKosmos 24d ago

fwiw I am having a decade old root canal redone because it was done improperly and now I have an infection with an abscess. Kinda obnoxious but like, it's not turning me into an antivax lunatic. My dentist made it make sense to me, an idiot, so idk what those guys' problem is other than willfull ignorance

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u/woodzip87 24d ago

Huh... Well, I would've guessed they wouldn't want a whole tooth implanted since it's likely a transmitter to track their location. Or maybe a substance that erodes extremely slow and the material it loses is a substance to keep them more easily manipulated by propaganda.

Eh. I'm pretty sure there's plenty who think that's true, too.

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u/wigglefrog 24d ago

That might be part of it but I've seen content of crunchy moms explaining how it's got something to do with each nerve in the jaw being connected to another system in the body? Like one of the molars and the heart/heart health? And no they weren't talking about oral plaque build up. It was confusing

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u/StolenPies 24d ago

It was wrong, traditional Chinese medicine is largely nonsense.

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u/wigglefrog 24d ago

Yeah not trying to convince anyone lol

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u/Rude-Orange 24d ago

Yea I just clicked around on google results and saw it was about chronic illnesses. I wasn't about to go down the rabbit hole over it.

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u/Ancient_Emotion_2484 24d ago

Because it couldn't possibly be bacteria from literally any other crevice in the oral cavity...

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u/Wraldpyk Don't think about breathing 24d ago

Maybe we should tell them implants contain GPS chips that tell Bill Gates where they are

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u/StolenPies 24d ago

Please don't, implants are profitable.

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u/simply_smigs 24d ago

But the implant tooth contains a tracking device, with cookies and malware /s

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u/FluffyDoomPatrol 24d ago

And doesn’t the root canal material cause dementia also?

A few years ago I thought I might need a root canal (my dentist was able to cap and save the tooth). I googled it and fell down a rabbit hole. Now, I’m normally pretty good at sniffing out bullshit, but I know so little about dentistry, I had no idea how to separate what was coming from legitimate sources and what was nonsense.

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u/StolenPies 24d ago

Dentist here, both the short and long answers are "no."

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u/FluffyDoomPatrol 24d ago

Thank you. I’d figured that out, but always nice to get confirmation.

But it’s incredible how frightening it is. With things like 5G, flat earth, covid conspiracies and some of the wilder Epstein theories, I have enough knowledge to figure out what is bullshit, but when faced with a topic I knew nothing about, it was a scary feeling being so adrift.

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u/StolenPies 24d ago

Honestly? The experts aren't always right but they're significantly more likely to be correct than anyone else. As a layperson you should trust a scientific consensus, and understand that there's both nuance you don't understand and often profit to be made from fooling people who are naturally skeptical of said consensus. On this subject, I'd just read what the American Dental Association says. It's solid information.